Pushkar Fair – Mother of All Fairs

Note: Take a big cup of your favorite coffee. This post is long and full of pictures. It will take a while to load completely depending on you net speed.
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Main reason behind my Rajastan visit this year was to attend pushkar fair. I started with my travel plans once I read about pushkar on an email list. Pushkar camel fair is worlds largest camel fair. A small city of population 14,000 boasts 200000 visitors during the fair. Around 50 thousand camels and other cattle are traded during the fair period. Pushakr fair shows what does it mean to be part pf Indian Holiday. Colorful crowd having fun with their family and friends involving lots of shopping. The fair goes for a week as travelers around the world join in the fun.
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Pushkar fair or Pushkar ki mela is celebrated during the week of Kartik Purnima. Thousands of people take holy dip in the lake on kartik purnima. According to legend Brahma was on his way to search a location for his Yagna. During the search mission a lotus fell from his hand onto the earth and water sprouted from that place to form a lake. The lake has 52 ghats (one of them is brahma ghat) where pilgrims can perform their rituals. Pushkar boasts the only Brahma temple in the world.

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For that one week pushkar is full of color. Its a dream land for photographer who wants to capture people and their mood. I had this very ordinary digital camera with 3x zoom (including both digital and optical). It was difficult for me to capture close ups. My best pictures are here.

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Camels come from all over Rajastan to Pushkar. The rate of the camels vary from 5k to 25k.

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Lot of fun competition happen during the mela. This guy won the mustache competition.

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Its very common seen in pushkar. People are either checking out camels or smoking.

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Mela is known for shopping. You will see hundreds of temporary shops being setup on the road side.

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You will easily find hundreds of women smoking on the roadside. I had to get very close to her to take this picture. I was little scared but nothing actually happened. Then I figured out the easy way to picture is stand in the middle of the road against the flow. Click the picture as subject comes near to you.

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Participant of dressed camel competition.

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You can see families shopping either for kids or for camels.

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Typical Rajastan family arriving to participate in mela.

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How can there be a mela with out giant wheel and snake charmers?
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And of course I had my own style
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This story is a part of my travel stories from Rajastan called StoriesFromRajasthan. The places covered are Ajmir, Jaisalmer, Pushkar and Jaipur

19 Responses

  1. Hari Prasad says:

    Hey,

    Awesome shots :) nice one, I will start planning too for the next years pushkar fair, and I very much agree that it is very uch an artists delight!

    And Its really great to know, people still dress that way they do when we are talkin about GUCCI and the latest trends in clothes.. and the colors of INdia are WONDERFUL… good one thej :) thanks for the pics

    These things show that how deep our roots go to and how they still survive without the .coms!!! say wat :)

  2. Vinay says:

    Cool man… nice pics… they are good enough to be displayed in a photography exibition :)

  3. MK says:

    Super duper photography

  4. Srinath says:

    Excellent photos..

  5. Harsha says:

    Nice shots thej.. pushkar fair is awesome.. I had to plan it for..

  6. sindhu says:

    cool blue shirtuu! :) i like!

    and lovely pics… but you should try using lightbox and flickr plugins so the page loads faster and we can still see high quality pics on a click.

  7. Thejesh GN says:

    @Hari:Vinay:MK: Thank you
    @Srinath:Harsha:Manoj: Thank you
    @Sindhu: I am still thinking about lightbox. I dont want to load too many .js on front page.

  8. Lav says:

    You seemed to have had cartloads of fun !! :)

  9. Lav says:

    You seem to have had cartloads of fun there !
    Kewl blue look, btw ! :)

  10. Ujj says:

    Superb photography bros. Followed your journey on twitter..was fun
    and I just love the T-shirt.

  11. Harsha says:

    Wonderful pictures!! Hope you had a a gala time!

  12. idclidcl says:

    Thej, once again I am taken back by the culture of your lovely country .. excellent photography !.. the t-shirt is great !.. regards, idcl

  13. Thejesh GN says:

    @Lav and Ujj: Yup. Loads.
    @idcl: Thanks for liking the photographs.

  14. Tushita says:

    Awesum pics dude!!! I love pushkar and i go here wenever i get a chance… with frnds or without … i love the israeli food here and the shopping is just mindblowin!!! even off season, pushkar is heavenly! it actually reminds me of pahargunj in old delhi!!have u been to the baba cafe and pink floyd cafe??? sunset cafetaria is grt tooo.!!!!

  15. Thejesh GN says:

    @Tushita hey thanks for liking the pics. I am not lucky enough to go there often.

    I did visit sunset cafeteria and yes its gr8.

  16. Sandra says:

    I am planning a visit to India in Oct-Nov 08. My children are 11, 9, 6. Do you think the Pushkar fair would be a good experience for kids those ages, or too overwhelming?

    Thanks. Sandra

  17. rakhi says:

    nice pics …….
    bt lots of things r missed

  18. Naveen Jain says:

    Very good introduction about the Pushkar Camel fair highlighting the key points.Check out my post about Pushkar Camel Fair 2018 for details-https://www.noblehousetours.com/pushkar-india-camel-fair-2018